A big farewell

My father-in-law's funeral is now over after four long and tiring and emotional days. I'm writing this sitting in the Emirates lounge in Dubai on my way to a consulting engagement in Johannesburg that I was supposed to start last week.

On Tuesday the family received condolences at home. Most of the visitors were relatives and close friends so it was quite comforting to receive them. The day was complicated only by the jet lag (we arrived in Beirut after 26 hours of travelling at 4 am and people started coming by around 10 am) and the fact that we had nothing to wear since Etihad had decided not to transfer our luggage in Abu Dhabi (to be the subject of another post I promise you).

Wednesday was the service and burial which took place at one of the churches in the family's home village (now a Beirut suburb) which fittingly we visited last October and which my father-in-law was instrumental in restoring after the civil war. The service led by the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut was conducted in Arabic so I didn't understand any of it, but I found it beautiful nonetheless.

Here's a photo I took of the church on that visit last October not knowing we'd soon be back there under such sad circumstances.

Viewing the body was harrowing but necessary to help us accept that he really is gone and burying my father-in-law alongside his parents in the family crypt was very emotional. So this was definitely the hardest day.

On Thursday the family continued receiving condolences in the salon attached to the church. The process consisted of us sitting in this large room from 10 am to 7 pm, standing to receive visitors and shaking their hands or kissing them on the cheeks (three times).


The visitors would then sit for some period of time (I'm sure the duration of their stay was carefully calculated according to some protocol but I didn't manage to figure out the algorithm) before repeating the process on their way out. This is quite a Middle Eastern thing to do. You'll often see photos of Arab political meetings where everyone is sitting around a room like this.

The process was repeated on Friday in a downtown location where fewer family and more political leaders visited. So I've now shaken the hands and kissed the cheeks of a sufficient proportion of Beirut's residents that I feel ready to run for a seat in the Lebanese parliament.

I always knew that my father-in-law was a man of some prominence in Beirut but I hadn't really appreciated how widely he was known and respected in the local community and in political and business circles.

I also knew that he'd maintained good relations with the Shiite community which is notable enough in a country renown for sectarian strife, but they really went out of their way to pay him respect; hanging banners farewelling him in the street; Shiite leaders coming to pay their condolences; and the overwhelmingly Shiite residents lining the streets and the Shiite shopkeepers closing their stores as the coffin was carried from the church to the cemetery.

One wedding and a funeral

On Saturday we attended the wedding of my cousin Kirralee (“Lil”) held on the beach at Noosa on the Sunshine Coast. The weather was perfect for an outdoor wedding and it was a great opportunity to catch up with my parents and brother, some of my uncles and aunts and my New Zealand-based cousins. I like to think of myself as a fairly practical person but I like the big rituals; they generally emphasise the very best in human nature.

Unfortunately towards the end of the reception I received one of those phone calls that everyone dreads–news that my father-in-law Youssef Matta had suffered a heart attack and with no warning and no reprieve was taken from us. Telling my wife that she had lost her beloved father was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Now we’re making the long journey with heavy hearts from Brisbane to Beirut for the funeral.

In the twenty plus years I knew him my initial feelings of intimidation became love, and for my wife, to whom family is everything, he was a central figure in her life. Fortunately we had the opportunity to spend a week with him in Beirut in October last year and my wife visited him again in January.

As sad as I feel, the hardest part of this is knowing how deeply my darling wife Marie feels the loss and being able to do nothing to ease her suffering apart from simply being there. We have a difficult process to go through in the next few days with the funeral and associated Middle Eastern mourning rituals. Then, as they say, life goes on. But when you lose a loved one it will never be quite the same.

Return to Manila

This week we went to Manila in the Philippines where I had my first overseas job in late 1999, supposedly for ten weeks but I ended up having a series of contracts there throughout 2000 and 2001.

That was just the beginning of our continuing international adventure, but regular readers will know that we get back Brisbane frequently. In fact my Mum once told me she sees me more now that I live overseas than when I lived in Australia.

My last visit to Manila was in late 2003 (by which time we were living in Singapore) so I was interested to see if anything had changed in five years. The verdict? Not much. The traffic still makes getting around a nightmare; the air is still very smoggy; the hot and humid weather was a useful reminder of why I love Steamboat’s cool, dry climate so much; and corrupt oligarchs (think Russia without the oil) are still trying to run the country into the ground.

But the good things – the wonderful optimism and joie de vivre of the Filipino people – haven’t changed either. Not to mention the world’s juiciest but least stringy mangoes available almost year round for a pittance.

I’m not sure I’d want to spend a whole lot of time there again (and Marie is sure that she wouldn’t, so that settles that), especially when there are still so many other places waiting to be experienced, but I was reminded of why I enjoyed the experience so much the first time round.

Springbrook

Yesterday we visited my sister who lives in Springbrook, right in the rainforest about 50 metres from the National Park.

After lunch and coffee (and cake), my nephew Julian and I decided to walk the Twin Falls circuit, although with my young and fit nephew it was more like a forced march than a walk; the National Parks' information says allow two hours but we did it in 57 minutes, including the additional 750 metres from the end of the trail back to my sister's house.

The walk starts at the top of an escarpment where there are sweeping views of the Gold Coast.


The first part goes along the top of these cliffs.


But the best part comes after you've descended to the bottom of the cliffs where the path passes through the fissures in the rocks on the way down. That's my nephew Julian disappearing into the rocks.


Then the walk takes you through a lush rainforest past and behind two waterfalls (hence the name Twin Falls).



Here's the track from the GPS unit.


I would highly recommend it, but please note the warning from the National Parks' website:

DANGER: Sheer cliffs and waterfalls. One slip could be fatal — serious injury or death may result from walking near the edge. Keep to the track. Supervise children closely.

Music download

I made my first online music purchase yesterday. Two things came together to make this possible.

First, online music stores (like Amazon, which is the one I used) are now providing music in the non-proprietary MP3 format.

Second, they are now making online music available without DRM (Digital Rights Management), an evil scheme designed to hobble your listening and dreamed up by the devil himself (with a little help from his minions in the major music labels).

I've been waiting for these developments because in a field where technology is still developing it seems crazy to me to be spending money on music in ways that lock you in to a particular vendor (e.g. Apple or Microsoft) or a particular device thus preventing you from later on using music on devices that haven't yet been invented and in ways that haven't even been imagined.

So I'm happy now, because my wife will often buy a CD just to get one song she likes. It's so much better to be able to pay 99 cents and download just the song she's after.

Self-assembling robots

I've been following developments in robotics for a while, and I even bought a Roomba a while back (mostly so that twenty years from now I can brag about owning one of the earliest domestic robots), but this is amazing:


I'm now more convinced than ever that robots will change the world for the next generation in the way the Internet is changing it for ours.

Backcountry snowshoeing

Today we went snowshoeing on Rabbit Ears pass. Here's the track:


Note that we went out and back on the same course.

This is a marked trail that starts at the East Summit car park. But as you can see from the completely untracked snow, it hasn't had a lot of recent use.


It's quite a treat having views like this all to yourself:


This was quite a bit easier than some of the tours we've been doing on the mountain. Whilst the distance we covered at 2.56 miles is similar, the total vertical climb of 516 ft is quite a bit less (like 1,603 ft on the last one).

Final day (really)

Today, day 36, was really my final day of skiing for the 2007-08 season. I start my new job next week and I've got a lot of travel coming up.

There's still plenty of snow on the mountain, including six inches of fresh powder. A powder day is the ultimate way to finish the season nearly three weeks after the mountain closes!

There are no photos today - I took the camera but didn't check if the batteries were charged - but here's the track:


Again I started at Thunderhead after Marie dropped me. You'll note that this time I went all the way to the Four Points hut. My original plan was to go to the top of Storm Peak but a guy came down and said it was very wind blown on top. Frankly I didn't have the energy to go on so he gave me a face saving way to stop at that point!

Best sections were skiing down Rainbow and Valley View. Both were untracked. On Valley View in particular the powder was heavy enough to leave very clear tracks. There's no better ego boost than to stand in the valley below and look back up at the mountain and see your own tracks!

I also included in the track the section from the mountain to my home since I walked that and therefore consider it part of today's exercise program.

The most important statistics for today are elevation gained (the effort) of 2,510 ft and elevation lost (the reward) of 3,141 ft. This was a four and a half hour exercise. As tough as it was in places I'll take this over running on a treadmill any day.

More snowshoeing

Marie and I continued to take advantage of the abundance of snow on the mountain to go snowshoeing again today.



Here's the track:


The key stats are distance covered 3.1 miles and elevation gained 1,603 ft.

Still not over

My ski season is still not over because I went hiking for turns again today. This time I went all the way to the top of the gondola. Here's the track:


The best part of the day was on Norther where I found untracked spring corn. Here's what it looked like before I skied it:


And here's what it looked like after I'd laid down some tracks:


Check this out for a ridiculous amount of snow two weeks after the mountain has closed:


And this is off Rudi's which is mid-mountain; there's even more snow at the top of the mountain!

Finally today's stats:

Vertical ft: 2,025 hiking up, 2,481 skiing down (Marie dropped me at Thunderhead which gave me 450 ft for free)
Maximum speed: 38.3 mph
Average climbing speed: 2.0 mph

You can see the difference between hiking up and skiing down quite clearly in this graph (the first dip is when I skied Norther and then climbed back up):


Hiking up gives you a whole new perspective on the mountain. In particular everything seems a whole lot steeper when you have to get up it under your own power. Even areas I think of as flat when I ski them actually have a distinct grade to them.

Earning your turns

The opera's not over until the fat lady sings, and the ski season's not over until I stop skiing. Which means that the ski season is not over.

Those of you paying attention will be asking how that can be when I reported on closing day back on April 6.

It's called "earning your turns" - strapping your skis to your back and getting to the top of the mountain the old fashioned way. Like this:


You can see the gradual increase in elevation at quite slow speeds as I snowshoe up, and then some sudden spikes in speed and drop in elevation around the 1:45 hour mark as I begin to ski down.


Yes it's a lot of work, but worth it so you can do this when the lifts have stopped running and everyone has gone to the beach:


I was accompanied by my lovely wife Marie who took the great photo above and who thinks it's quite amusing wearing her summer hat on the snow:


So add one day and 1,726 ft of vertical to my 2007-08 season total!

New job

I gave my notice today after 8 1/2 years with my current employer (the first two and a half as a contractor). I'm moving to a smaller company that is entirely focused on my field of expertise rather than pursuing it as one of several areas.

Other than that, not much will change. The type of work is basically the same (in fact my old and new companies work together on many projects) and I'll continue to live here in Steamboat and travel all over the world which I love, but never so much that I don't always look forward to coming home, especially during the ski season!

Colour and movement

Check out this great photo taken by my nephew Julian. Amazing colours and he caught the dancer in mid air!


Here's the accompanying article he wrote for his university newspaper.

Snowshoeing

The ski mountain is closed for the season so today we went snowshoeing on the mountain rather than skiing. As you can see there's plenty of snow, so much that it's almost criminal to close the mountain so early, but don't get me started on that!


We started at the base and did a loop up around Bashor and then down Vogue. Here's the track.


It's only 1,528 ft of vertical in two hours but remember this is walking up, not riding a lift!

Here's my lovely wife Marie looking like she's having fun.




And me. It's a little less obvious but I'm having fun to.

Crying into your beer

Some good news today, it seems Colorado is about to repeal its laws preventing liquor sales on Sundays.

This law is only moderately inconvenient - once you know about it you can plan ahead - but inconvenient it still is. And more importantly it's just plain wrong. Nothing but small business owners wanting government to let them get away with not serving their customers. Listen to this local liquor store owner:

“It went just fine without being open on Sundays,” said Ted Heid, who owns Southside Liquors. “I thought, ‘What a business to be in; I have football Sunday off.’"

He's speaking the language of special interests so let me translate. What he actually means is this:

"I don't want to survive by giving my customers the service they want, and I want the government to prevent my competitors from providing them the service that I won't."

My response to Mr Heid is simple. Take Sundays off. And Mondays to Saturdays while you're at it.

Season summary

I promised yesterday to provide a summary of my 2007-08 season. So here it is.

The obvious place to start is with our record breaking 489 inches of snow, well ahead of the previous record of 447.5 inches. So as I anticipated three weeks ago, I can now say I lived and skied in Steamboat during the biggest season ever! I could be bragging about this to newcomers for the next 20 years...

For various reasons, including the late opening, some travel and some unexpected surgery, I only managed 33 days (although I did think at one stage that I was finished at 24 days).

But what a fantastic 33 days they were including this powder day before Christmas when I skied so hard I could barely get out of bed the next morning, my best day ever on January 10, my best week ever in early February on my new fat skis, this unexpected bonus powder day in mid-March after I'd recovered from my surgery, and finally powder days right in to April in the season where Spring never came.

And finally, this season I introduced GPS tracking. Here's a consolidated track from the last eight days of skiing. Next year I should be able to produce a track of every single run for the season which should cover pretty much every piece of this wonderful mountain!

Closing day

Well that's it, the end of the the record breaking (489 inches!) 2007-08 season.

We're closing with a base of more than 100 inches and it's forecast to continue snowing all week. Unfortunately because Easter was so early this year visitor numbers in April would not have been enough to make it worthwhile for the ski company to keep the mountain open longer.

In keeping with the mild Spring we've been having it was overcast and cool today. Five inches of fresh snow overnight made for a silky smooth surface for carving those final turns. So here's the track for today.


The highlights included Chute 2, the trees to skier's left of upper Twister, and some nice powder stashes in the trees of Wally World.

I'll blog a more detailed summary of the season tomorrow, but for now I just want to sit back with a beer and bask in the glow of a fantastic season.

Finally today's stats:

Vertical ft: 13,479
Maximum speed: 41.0 mph
Distance skied: 12.18 miles
Time skiing: 52:48
Time stopped: 11:15
Time riding lifts: 57:53

Final days

The mountain closes for the season on Sunday so I'm almost done for 2007-08.

Which is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions given how unbelievably good the skiing still is (think King Lear Richard III who said something like "another week, another week, my kingdom for another week").

It's stayed cool enough on the upper mountain that the snow we had last week has not melted and refrozen overnight in typical Spring style but instead is still soft and buttery. It's a complete contrast to last year when Spring seemed to come in early March and stayed with a vengeance.

It was especially good on the Ridge (not on today's track due to technical difficulties) the trees of Closet which I did twice (but again only appears once due to the unforeseen technical problem), Triangle 3 and Tornado.

Here's today's track. Note that the straight line between the Morningside Chair and the Sundown Express is an artifact of the GPS unit somehow being paused and me turning it back on when I notice. I'll need to figure out how to stop that from happening by next year.

No April Fool

Today's report is going to be so glowing that if I had posted it yesterday you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of April Fools joke.

By now we should be in full on Spring skiing mode - crusty mornings, slushy afternoons, sunscreen and t-shirts. Instead we had nearly two feet of new snow on Sunday and Monday, with another couple of inches Monday night and last night to keep it fresh, plus mild temperatures and lots of cloud cover which have kept the snow in perfect condition.

And the tourists have left so we have it all to ourselves this week. I arrived at the gondola around 8.28 am and was number five in the singles line!

So here's today's track.


I missed the best of the snow earlier in the week since I've been out of action with a chest cold, but I found some great stashes in the trees and foot deep untracked powder on No Names - expert (double black diamond) terrain that you can only get to by walking up the last 200 feet tends to keep the people away. I usually don't bother with these runs - it takes too much time (and energy) that could be used skiing other great runs - but today it was absolutely worth it.


One thing I find amazing about my GPS unit is how accurate it is. Check it out tracking me inside the Four Points Hut as I stop for a snack and a rest. Actually, that's a bit Big Brotherish isn't it?


Finally, the stats:

Vertical ft: 17,992
Maximum speed: 42.1 mph
Distance skied: 14.61 miles
Time skiing: 1:10:40
Time stopped: 1:14:19 (no lift lines at all, just resting!)
Time riding lifts: 54:30

Hopeless Heathrow

I commented previously on the hopelessness of London's major airports and Heathrow in particular.

The airport operator, BAA, and its largest tenant, British Airways, have been responding to criticism with what amounts to "Terminal 5 will fix it."

So, all well and good because Terminal 5 opened today...and drum roll please maestro...

...by the end of the day passengers were being told not to check any baggage.

Looks like you don't get much for £4.3 billion these days.

Work? You wanted it to work guv? Well why didn't you bleedin well say so?

But the Queen was there to open it, so that's OK isn't it?

I know the Brits can be a bit tradition bound, but here's a hint for them - less ceremony, more testing!

Fat skis and Spring slush

I took my fat skis out today thinking they might be fun in the Spring slush. The verdict? Guilty!

Here's today's track.


I tried Pioneer Ridge today for the first time (other than on a powder day) in two seasons. The run below the lift was particularly good.


Of course I did at least one of my favourite tree runs as well, in this case Shadows/Lights Out, as well as Kuus' Cruise (Priest Creek lift line).


Finally home via my favourite route, which I've described before but not illustrated like this, namely Oops and Vertigo.


Stats:

Vertical ft: 13,208
Maximum speed: 33.7 mph
Distance skied: 10.62 miles
Time skiing: 51:36
Time stopped: 20:33 (no lift lines at all, just breathing)
Time riding lifts: 54:30

Spring, sort of

Spring continues to come slowly this year with the temperatures still below 40F (compared to the 50s this time last year). That means the snow on the upper mountain remains buttery and the snow on the lower mountain is soft but not slushy.

Here's today's track.

Today I skied with Jack, a lawyer from Silicon Valley.

And now for the stats:

Vertical ft: 10,744
Maximum speed: 44.4 mph
Distance skied: 9.42 miles
Time skiing: 56:50
Time stopped: 25:20 (no lines today)
Time riding lifts: 1:30:46

Feeling young

When I saw the snow report this morning - four inches - I thought big deal (although it is enough to break the record!) and almost didn't go out today. Which would have been bad. Really bad. Because I had an awesome day skiing.

I met a guy called Seth this morning who is nineteen years old, very fit and has been skiing since he was three and we had a great time skiing together. Definitely a cheaper way for a guy my age (45 next month) to feel young than buying a red sports car.

Anyway, here's the map of what I skied today exported from my GPS unit to Google Maps.


Let's use Google Earth to zoom in on the best bits.

We began with the classic Steamboat tree runs - Shadows, Lights Out, Twilight and Closet.


Then we hit the trees off to skiers' left of Sunnyside. There's a steep glade hidden in there with some very large rocks (circled in the image below - the rocks are the white shapes) which provide some great drop offs when the snow is deep like it is this year. As a bonus there were plenty of fresh lines in there too.


Also good after that were the trees between Vagabond and Rudi's Run. For some reason I'd skied the lower half of this before but only the top half for the first time last Friday. But I'll be skiing this a whole lot more in the future. And the (large) bumps of White Out were pretty good too.


Now for the stats:

Vertical ft: 16,530
Maximum speed: 39.3 mph
Distance skied: 14.4 miles
Time skiing: 1:22:15
Time stopped: 1:17:43 (mostly the stop for lunch - there weren't any real lift lines today)
Time riding lifts: 1:30:10

Spring?

Normally this time of year it's warm and sunny meaning Spring skiing-crusty in the morning, perfect in the middle of the day and slushy in the afternoon and don't forget your sunscreen.

Not today. It was cold, foggy and windy on the mountain. And snowing. So maybe the snow gods have one more powder day left for us. The last powder-ish day last year was March 29 so it's still quite possible.

I took my GPS unit out again today but somehow half way through the pause button got pushed so the data is incomplete. I'm also having trouble getting the heart rate monitor to work consistently. So I'm treating the rest of the season as a test run for next year.

Best run of the day was a freshly groomed Rolex. Worst run was probably Two O'clock where the snow was blowing so hard in my face my lips and teeth felt frozen.

But at least the bad weather keeps the tourists inside so I didn't have to worry to much about one of them running in to me in the fog! And hey, it's still skiing and I had fun carving some beautiful GS turns and skiing some bumps...

GPS skiing

I recently acquired a sports GPS watch and I tested it out for the first time today.

Here's my route exported to Google Maps.


And even better, to Google Earth.


And some key statistics produced by the unit:

Vertical ft: 12,762
Maximum speed: 40.8 mph (much faster than I thought I was skiing)
Distance skied: 10.4 miles (much further than I would have guessed)
Time skiing: 49:21
Time stopped: 24:52 (it's Spring Break so there were some lift queues)
Time riding lifts: 1:04:11

Wow. Pow. Pow Wow. Pow Pow Pow!

Yes I seem to have lost the power of articulate speech. At least temporarily. You see today was the end of my medical layoff from skiing for a month and I got incredibly lucky because it was a powder day - in mid-March! So I'm close to speechless.

The report said seven inches of new snow overnight, but I didn't get out early like I usually do since I only got in from my trip to New Zealand at 11 pm last night after 30 hours of travel. For some reason I had this strange desire to sleep this morning.

But there were still plenty of stashes left in the trees even around midday when I got going. I started out with Shadows/Lights Out and Twilight and then headed to the trees to skiers left of Sunnyside where the powder was deep, soft and largely untracked. So good I got stuck in a loop for a while just doing it again and again.

I also found great stashes in the trees off the sides of Norther, BC Liftline, Vagabond and well, everywhere. Even between the zig-zags of Why Not to the right of Vagabond where the snow is now deep enough to cover up most of the scrubby stuff that usually makes this unskiable. And to finish everything off, my favourite route home - Oops and Vertigo. A far better day than I expected this time of year.

With today's fall we're now within a few inches of the all time record of 447.5 inches set in 1996-97. So soon I'll be able to brag about living and skiing in Steamboat during the biggest season ever...

Flying with the PM

I just arrived in Wellington, New Zealand (it's already Monday morning here even though it's still Sunday at home). I have a major presentation to a customer on Wednesday and then I'll be back home on Thursday.

Helen Clark, the Prime Minister of New Zealand was on my connecting flight from Auckland. They're an egalitarian bunch the Kiwis. Not only does the PM fly commercial, she flys coach. (Well she has no choice since domestic flights are all single class, but still it's an interesting contrast to the US President and Air Force One).

She had one staffer with her but no real security. I suppose the PM of NZ isn't quite as good at making enemies as the President of the United States.

RIAA to consumers: "If it's good, it's not ours"

From a recent Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) press release:

Watch for Compilations that are “Too Good to Be True": Many pirates make “dream compilation” CDs, comprised of songs by numerous artists on different record labels who would not likely appear on the same legitimate album together.

Don't you just love an organisation whose business model is so predicated on shafting consumers that they can keep a straight face while putting out a press release that effectively says, "We produce crap and try to cram it down your throat. If someone is selling the stuff you actually want then it's definitely not us."

Take me to your 'buy a dozen songs you don't want to get the one you do' overlords.

Historic preservation

One issue that's been on the agenda in Steamboat in recent times with all the development going on is historic preservation.

To the credit of the current City Council they are moving in the direction of a completely voluntary code. That is the only approach that is consistent with a meaningful concept of private property. It's one thing to restrict what I can do with my property if it harms others, it another to restrict my property rights in order to benefit others.

Unfortunately there are still plenty of players in this town who are ready to impose costs on the private owners of historical structures for the "benefit of the community." Here's an idea. If historic preservation is so valuable to "the community" how about they put their money where their mouth is and pay private owners to preserve properties. It always focuses the mind to have to pay for one's high minded ideals doesn't it?

Just a little out of my way

Yesterday we drove to Grand Junction, a four hundred mile (650 km) round trip (see the map below), so that I could be fingerprinted for my citizenship application.

I find several things about this annoying.

First, the appointment process. This consists of sending you a letter with an allocated date and time. No pretence of trying to match their availability with your convenience. If the allocated date and time don't work for you then you can ask for it to be rescheduled. But that just results in them sending you another appointment time to which you've had zero input.

Second and more importantly, why do I need to drive four hundred miles for this in the first place? The fingerprints are submitted for checking to a national database that is used basically by every law enforcement agency in the United States. My local sheriff's office (five mile round trip) has the capability to capture and submit prints in the standard format.

And third, why do I have to be fingerprinted again. I submitted fingerprints to the same agency when applying for my green card. Why not just use those (fingerprints don't age the way faces do)? There are lots of functions within the Department of Homeland Security which are integrated in name only, but these two, Immigration and Naturalisation (now called Citizenship) were part of one organisation (the INS) long before DHS was even a bad idea in some neocon's crazy mind.

Apart from those frustrations, the service was excellent. I expected to arrive to find a situation that would make queuing at the driver licensing office look good but was pleasantly surprised to find that there was not a single other applicant in the office and so I had a total wait time, even though I was early, of zero minutes. In fact in the 15 minutes I was there it was just me. Hard to reconcile this with the reports of enormous backlogs in naturalisation processing and advice from CIS itself that the expected wait time for my interview is somewhere between nine and twelve months.

The very nice woman taking the prints had a hard time though. She's trained to take prints from people who've typically never had their prints taken before, or if they have only once or twice in their life. No I'm not a hardened criminal in the habit of being fingerprinted. It's just that I design biometric systems for a living, and in the process of testing and demonstrating such systems I've probably taken my own prints hundreds of times, so I found it really, really difficult to adjust to having someone else guide my fingers during the capture process.

Fortunately we took the opportunity while in Grand Junction to visit Home Depot. We've been thinking for a while about remodeling our kitchen but the price we got from a local kitchen store was just too much in relation to the value of our condo or what future potential buyers would be willing to pay extra for. Looking at the products available at Home Depot convinced us that we could do it at a price we can live with (about half of the previous estimate). Now we just need to decide if we can live with the disruption.

It's hard to work when...

...some guys are shovelling snow off the roof right above your head. Man it's noisy. Like being inside a tin drum while someone bangs on the sides. And a small price to pay for 400 inches of snow!

Update (9pm Thursday 28 Feb): Not only is it noisy but it's dangerous. A man died today after falling from a roof while removing snow. The poor guy survived a couple of tours of Iraq and he loses his life in such a tragic accident. Life really sucks sometimes.

Not so Great Britain

For a country that used to rule an empire on which the sun never sets, it's a long way to fall, but I think the final votes are in: Great Britain has the world's worst major airport in London Heathrow.

If it wasn't enough that (alone of all the world's airport operators) BAA has imposed it's own more restrictive hand luggage policies because it's too damn cheap to hire enough security staff, now we have British Airways telling customers they can't check any bags!

Imagine turning up at Heathrow to fly home (say to Denver, as I've done three times in the past six months) to be told "sorry guv, you'll need leave the suitcases behind"!

The crazy thing is that unlike most cities where there's an element of natural monopoly to the airport business, London actually has huge amounts of traffic along with two major airports (Heathrow and Gatwick) and two not so insignificant ones (Standsted and Luton).

The obvious solution is to have them compete with each other. Of course that's not so obvious to the bright sparks pretending to govern Britain who in their infinite wisdom continue to let BAA operate all four airports at a standard which can only be categorised as a global embarrassment.

Surgery

There's been no blogging this week and more importantly there's been no skiing because I went into hospital on Monday morning for a diagnostic procedure that turned into surgery.

The good news is they found the problem that had been troubling me for the last ten months and fixed it.

The bad news is that I can't ski for three or four weeks by which time I may be away on a project until after the ski season ends. That would mean only 24 days this season (compared to 42, 60 and 37 in the past three seasons). Of course that would be disappointing but I've had some great days and I'm glad to have my problem fixed.

I do have to remember that the 163 days I've skied since we moved here in 2004 probably exceeds all the skiing I did before that (I started in 1985). And when you live in a ski resort there's always next season to look forward to.

President's Day weekend

It's the President's Day weekend which is usually second only to the Christmas-New Year week in terms of crowds on the mountain. But today it was surprisingly uncrowded, despite the fact that it started out a beautiful sunny day. So day 24 for me was another day for sleeping in and then heading out to ski the groomers for a couple of hours.

It was a little crustly in places but overall the snow cover and conditions are still excellent and it looks like a major storm may hit us tonight. It's been a whole week since my last powder day so I'm definitely ready to go again!

Open skies?

Australian newspapers are reporting on plans by Virgin Blue subsidiary V Australia to start trans-pacific flights in competition with Qantas as a result of Australia and the US signing an "Open Skies" agreement.

Unfortunately all this agreement does is allow US and Australian carriers to compete on this route without capacity controls. It doesn't allow for open anything.

What's the effect? Continued daylight robbery on the part of Qantas who compete only with United* for direct flights.

Let me demonstrate. Let's say I wanted to fly business class from Los Angeles to Sydney on May 20 returning June 17 (which I actually do, to attend my cousin's wedding and take care of some other stuff, not to mention catch a couple of Brisbane Lions games). It's going to cost me $US17,778!

Now let's imagine I want to make this trip from London to Sydney on the same dates, also in business class. Now before you see the price remember that this trip is about 75% longer. What's it going to cost me? £3,376 or $US6,621. That's about a fifth of the cost per mile.

The only difference is that excellent airlines like Singapore Airlines and Emirates compete with Qantas between Australia and Europe. Over recent year's they've lobbied the Australian government unsuccessfully to enter the trans-pacific route. The government's justification for keeping them out is that it's somehow good for Australian tourism and jobs. As far as I'm concerned the only jobs this policy is creating are for Air New Zealand.

So when the Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon says he welcomes the competition, what he really means is he's glad he can go on screwing trans-pacific business travellers and extracting excess profits thanks to this artificial market shortage created by the "wisdom" of government regulation. All I can say to Mr Dixon is "you're absolutely full of it mate".


* The world's second worst airline. Exceeded in their hopelessness only by Northwest.

Comparison

Today was not a powder day, but instead a beautiful sunny bluebird day. No need to rush out, so I took my old skis off the rack around noon and headed out to ski the groomers.

After a week of skiing powder on my new fat skis, it was interesting to compare the feel of my old skis. They're definitely easier to get on an edge than the fat skis, and so they're quicker in the short turns. I also expected them to be better in the bumps, but I'm not so sure.

It was warm today, the snow on the lower mountain had that spring skiing texture, but on the upper mountain the snow is in perfect condition.

Best week ever

With only eight inches of new light snow, today wasn't the best day ever (although it was up there as one of the great powder days) but when you combine another powder day today with a powder day yesterday, and another the day before that and another on Tuesday, then this would be my best week of skiing ever. It feels like a continuous blur of floating through the aspens breathing snow!

I was out pressing glass at the gondola at 8 am with a new friend Brian and our parish priest Father Ernest (yes it is wierd skiing with your priest, but he's a nice guy and good snowboarder). We began with a traverse across to Norther for first tracks and then rode up Four Points for more fresh tracks on Nelson's Run.

By then Pony Express was open so we hit the aspens off Middle Rib where there was plenty of deep snow both on the marked trail and in the trees. On the second run, just as I'd completed a really fast, smooth and agressive line through the trees, I snagged the remains of a broken branch with my shoulder, ripping the right arm of my jacket to shreds (I needed a new one anyway). While I was still out skiing in the cold my shoulder felt fine but now I'm inside and it's warmed up I can feel it (not to mention see a rather large bruise) but as potential ski injuries go it's pretty minor so I'm not complaining.

After that we cut through Nash Junction, up the Bar-UE chair and then across to Shadows where the snow was also deep and light. Soon after that Brian and Ernest were ready to call it quits, but in the meantime I'd run into my old friend Dave, so we gave Shadows another go (even better the second time around) followed by Twilight which was a little drifty but still nice, by which time I was absolutely exhausted. On the way back down I decided to try something different from the usual Oops/ Vertigo combo and found some nice stashes to skier's left on Valley View to reward me.

All in all an epic day to top off an epic week.

There are more storms forecast for next week so it ain't over yet, but whatever happens tonight, tomorrow I'm going to rest. I promise. Even if there's three feet of new snow. Well maybe not if there's three feet. But two feet. Well ok, not two feet. But one foot. No, not one foot. But anything less than a foot of new snow tonight and I'm resting tomorrow. Really.

More powder!

It seems like it just won't stop snowing in Steamboat this season. With another ten inches overnight today was another powder day.

Because it was windy overnight, the place to be was not at the top of the mountain where it was cold and the snow was crusty and heavy, but a little lower down where the snow was lighter. The lower half of Shadows and Twilight were much better than the upper half, but the best today was my first run down Surprise and then several runs on Elkhead where I found light, waist deep powder amongst the aspens.

White Out was also good, especially to skiers right where there were still some nice stashes even later in the morning, as was Vertigo on the way home where the best stashes were to the left side.

Did I mention my new fat skis?

Of course I did!

But I have to mention them again, because as good as they were in the "Champagne Powder" on Fat Tuesday, they really showed their worth today.

On Tuesday they made skiing the powder a lot less tiring but they didn't really let me do anything new. But today the powder was much heavier and wind blown with the depth varying from ankle to waist deep. I would have really struggled with these conditions on my other skis but the fat skis really let me rip it up.

I could feel the difference immediately as I tested out the trees between Twister and Hurricane but it was on my next run on Shadows that I really knew these skis would let me cut loose, which is exactly what I did on Lights Out, 3.30, Twilight (twice), Closet (so good that I also did it twice, which I never do) and of course Oops/Vertigo on my way home.

Fat Tuesday, Fat skis

I bought a new pair of fat skis yesterday (last year's model of these) and what better day to try them out than today, Fat Tuesday, on a mountain where we've had nearly 350 inches of snow already this season and three feet in the past 72 hours.

While it was only four inches of new snow overnight that was on top of such a deep base that it was deep and light in so many places that my new skis really got to prove their worth. After a couple of relaxed runs to adjust to their different feel, I really ripped it up, especially in the aspens on Fetcher Glade, Nash Junction, Shadows, Lights Out and Twilight.

And Vertigo on the way home was awesome as usual. It was amazing to stop half way down this great run in knee deep powder and to look back up the hill at nobody, to be all alone in paradise.

To top it off, I got the new skis on a great sale so they only cost about half of what I planned to spend.

There's only one word for day like today. Sweeeeeeeet.

Superbowl Sunday

We arrived home last night from another trip to England just in time to watch the Superbowl this afternoon on my big screen (and drink a little beer, although I could have done plenty of that in England).

Since I managed to predict the winner last year and close to the winning margin I thought I better go on the record with a prediction for this afternoon's game. My head says the Patriots by ten points but my heart says the Giants but only because I'm a Green Bay Packers fan* and I'd feel better if the team that stopped their run was good enough to go all the way.

* How big a fan? I was quite disappointed when the Packers lost to the Giants in the playoffs. But I've come to the game very late in my life and my real sporting passion is Aussie Rules, so I'll never love the Packers the way I love the Brisbane Lions. Which means you'll never, ever see me wearing a hat that looks like a great big piece of cheese!

Skiing trees safely

When you see the heading "skiing trees safely" it's likely that your first thoughts are about not crashing into trees. Yes that's important and you really should wear a helmet, but if you are coming to Steamboat and planning to ski the trees, you really need to understand the dangers of tree wells and how to avoid them.

Too many leftovers

We had dinner guests last night and we cooked enough food for twice as many people so now we have way too many leftovers to eat in the next few days.

Same problem on the mountain today. I went looking for leftovers in Wally World but with the gentler pitches the problem was too much snow. One small turn to miss a tree and you'd lose enough speed that you were stuck.

It was a little more skied out on the steeper slopes although there were still some stashes on Shadows, Lights Out and Kuus's Cruise.

I skied lazy and tired today - I suppose all the powder days this week have caught up with me - which means I wasn't nearly as aggressive with my line as I would like to have been, but it was still a great day.

Numbers can deceive

This morning's report said seven inches but it was the best seven inches you'll ever see, coming on top of nearly 30 inches in the previous 48 hours. While it wasn't the best day ever it was still pretty damn good. Sure the sun wasn't shining and the powder wasn't as light and dry as yesterday, but when you ski constantly from 8.30 am to 1 pm in deep, deep powder and there's still more out there when your legs finally give out, well that's a pretty good day.

I skipped the gondola line this morning and headed straight for the Christie Peak Express and Thunderhead Express combo. After a quick run down Vagabond and the lovely powder covered bumps of Surprise I took the BC Chair to the top of Whiteout for some really big powder covered bumps.

Then it was time for Pioneer Ridge. Today I'd made sure to stay in bounds with a run through the aspens of Fetcher Glade and another straight down Royal Flush. I then met some friends of my wife on the chair and skied Cabin Fever and Diamond Hitch with them.

From the top of the Pony Express I cut down through Nash Junction, Vortex and the Storm Peak Lift Line to meet my Aussie friend Nicole who it seems has forgiven me for pushing her so hard the first day we went out together. I enjoyed my previous runs through Fetcher Glade and Nash Junction so much that I took her back there for a repeat performance.

We found some great lines under the Bar-UE chair which we jumped back on and across to Morningside where we were hoping to find some good lines on Wake Up Call. Unfortunately it was a little cold and windy and the snow was a bit crusty and about that time we realised we were both getting quite tired. So we headed down via Crowtrack, Buddy's, Calf Roper, Twister, Hurricane and Moonlight to the Elkhead Chair and then across to Oops and Vertigo on the lower mountain to finish off with some really great powder bumps.

Best day ever

The report this morning said 15 inches and that was on top of an already soft base, so the snow was deep today - at least knee deep and waist deep in places - and as light and dry as you can imagine. The weather was also perfect. A comfortable 20F / -6C, no wind and plenty of sun.

So the conditions were as good as you could want and today I was ready to ski them. My mind was right, it's far enough into the season that my fitness is coming together, and in my fourth season living in Steamboat I'm now completely comfortable skiing powder.

I was a little slow getting started this morning so I didn't reach the top of Thunderhead until 9 am. I went right past the long line on the Storm Peak Express to the Pony Express which is where you want to be first thing on a powder day. My first run was to skiers' right. I was really excited about the untracked waist deep powder I found until I got to the bottom of the hill and realised I'd gone out of bounds and had a 200 metre traverse back to the lift ( in deep powder)!

Fifteen minutes and three buckets of sweat later my second run was straight down the middle followed by a run to skiers' left of the chair and then finally a run across through Nash Junction to the Bar-UE Chair. That was followed by Triangle 3 and then the trees between Twister and Hurricane where there was deep untracked snow that really shouldn't have been there by 10.30 am.

From there I took Moonlight down to the Sundown Express, deciding that on a day like today I had to ski one of my favourite tree runs. I chose Closet which was just awesome, before picking up some more powder lines on Oops and Vertigo on the lower mountain.

An awesome, epic day. Epically awesome. Awesomely epic. Wow!

Powder Sunday

Nine inches of fresh snow overnight according to the report, a pleasant 25F / -3C and no wind makes for a great powder day.

I was out early and on the Thunderhead Express chair when it opened at 8.30. A quick run down upper Vagabond and then right into untracked powder on the bumps of Surprise. That was followed by an early ride on the Burgess Creek chair which opened 5 minutes ahead of schedule and then first tracks on Sunnyside to the Sundown Express.

After a quick run through the trees of Shadows and Lights Out I met some friends at the top of the gondola. After than it was full on trees until about 12.30 when my legs screamed stop. I finished with a great run down Vortex on the lower mountain.

I'm off the the airport now for a two day trip to DC.

Fourteener*

For day 14 of my 2007-08 season I skied with some Aussie friends, Tony, his daughter Nicole and her husband Peter.

It was reasonably warm today (in the 20's F), the holiday crowds are starting to dissipate and the snow is still a lovely buttery texture. It was a little overcast but other than that it was a perfect day for cruising around the mountain just enjoying the fact of making turns.


*In Colorado the term 'fourteener' refers to (climbing) one of the 54 peaks over 14,000 ft.

Here comes the sun

After two weeks of constant snow today was a beautiful clear sunny day.

It was -10F / -23C when I got out of bed this morning so I didn't head out until around noon by which time it was 20F / -7C, which seemed quite warm after the really cold weather we've been having in the past few days.

Nothing special to report in terms of the skiing, just cruising around enjoying perfect packed powder on a sunny day.

2007 highlights

Well 2007 is nearly over. According to the official judge (my wife Marie) it's been a good year. Here's the summary and highlights:

• 37 days of skiing (21 in January-April and 12 in December) including my most epic day of powder skiing ever


• Seeing my first niece


• 125,000 miles of travel (so much for my resolution to travel less this year) including three trips to Australia and New Zealand, two trips each to Beijing and England, and one trip each to Paris, Hong Kong and Beirut.*

*I keep track of my flights at Flight Memory which has a neat feature to generate a map of all my flights for the year (below). Unfortunately it doesn't indicate how often I've flown a route, for example that I flew BNE-CBR about twenty times.